Facing business struggles, setbacks, conflicts, and hard financial times is something that business leaders and CEOs expect to experience.
I enjoy unhurried conversations where joys, hopes, dreams, and fears bubble to the surface of our often too-busy lives. As a pastor and frequent speaker on faith, work, and economics, I not only really like a bold cup of coffee but enjoy catching up with congregational members at a favorite coffee shop.
Creating a talent advantage defines much of the human capability (talent + leadership + organization + HR) agenda. HR professionals often gain credibility and have an impact when they help create a talent advantage by answering such questions as why talent matters, how to improve talent, and how to prioritize talent.
I’ve met some interesting animals on my path. A pygmy marmoset is one of the smallest monkeys in the world. If you’re lucky, you might see one in Peru. Remarkably, they can rotate their heads 180 degrees. My mother was skilled in this department!
The typical organization today is led by decision makers who are “vertical” silo owners. The organizational chart, reinforced by traditional budgeting and yes, even forecasting methods, results in decision makers who are structurally encouraged to think only within their own departmental scope. All too often doing so without insight into or knowledge of what would create increased value for the customer or capture new markets who have unmet needs.
Isn’t it sad to admit that the primary functions of finance are, by their very nature, a ton of waste?
As a CPA and information systems consultant, I remember when I realized that I was seen as the “enemy” of the LEAN experts. Management/cost accounting had become mired in the mud –actually driving wasteful recording, stuck in details that represented “muda” (waste) on the plant floor, adding no value to the customer, to the product or ultimately to the mission or objectives of the company.
Assume that you are building a house. First, you would have the plans for the building to study and prepare for construction. You would then implement the plan and begin building the house, taking care to follow the plan and do each task systematically and in order. Sometimes you will deviate from the plan due to new information and then prepare a change order modifying the plan. You take care to make sure the plumbing and electrical are all in place before you hang the drywall. You have to have all the right parts in the right places in order to have the right house.
Few companies have found the holy grail of management: High Employee Engagement. In the average company, about 32 percent of employees are actively engaged in their work and about 20 percent actively disrupt operations. But for those who figure it out, the rewards are unmistakable. Companies who score at the top quartile of employee engagement outperform those in the bottom quartile on virtually every measure of success. The Gallup Organization finds the gap in performance between top and bottom quartile companies varies from a low of ten to a high of seventy percentage points depending on what dimension of performance is studied. Here is short sampling of those performance gaps.
